A Return to Tradition: The Significance of Baking During COVID-19

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, baking has been a popular activity for those with more free time at home. News articles about the trend suggest the abundance of free time and the activity’s stress-relieving abilities as the main reasons for baking’s prevalence, but they fail to recognize the broader cultural implications of the baking craze. This autoethnographic article, from the perspective of someone who started baking more seriously during the pandemic, extends the work of food memory scholars such as David E. Sutton, and suggests that baking’s ability to create and evoke memories, its physicality, and the personal connections made and maintained through it are each important reasons for the hobby’s popularity during a time of global distress.